Huatyacuri and the Rich Man Who Called Himself God

The rich lord of Anchicocha

After the flood, the Huarochirí stories say, each district was ruled by its richest and strongest man. At Anchicocha lived a great lord whose house was roofed with red and yellow feathers and whose llamas were naturally colored red, blue, and yellow, so that his wool never needed dyeing. People came from everywhere to honor him, and he began to say that he was the god and creator. Then he fell ill with a long and disgusting sickness that none of his wise men could cure, and people began to murmur that a god should be able to heal himself.

What the foxes said

At this time five eggs appeared on the mountain Condorcoto nearby, the beginning of the god Pariacaca. Pariacaca's son Huatyacuri, a poor man so called because he ate his potatoes half-cooked, was traveling and lay down to sleep on a height. He saw a fox coming up from the coast meet a fox going down. The one from above said all was well, except that the rich lord was very sick and no one knew why. The real cause, it said, was that a grain of maize had fallen from his wife's toasting pan into her lap and she had given it to a man, and afterward committed adultery with him. Because of this a serpent was waiting on the roof of his house to eat it, and a toad with two heads was waiting under his grinding stone.

The cure

Huatyacuri went to the lord's house and asked the younger daughter whether anyone was ill. He promised to cure her father if she would be his. The assembled wise men laughed at the ragged stranger, but the sick man was desperate and agreed to give him his daughter. Huatyacuri told him the cause of his sickness, and asked whether he knew that there were serpents above his house and a two-headed toad under his grinding stone. They found the serpents and killed them; the wife, after denying it, confessed; and when they lifted the grinding stone a two-headed toad hopped out and went to a spring, where it still makes travelers lose their way. The lord recovered. Huatyacuri warned him that he was no god and must worship Huatyacuri's father, who would soon appear.

The contests

The husband of the lord's elder daughter was furious that his sister-in-law had been given to a beggar, and challenged Huatyacuri to contest after contest. Each time Huatyacuri went to his father, still in the egg on Condorcoto, for advice. Pariacaca told him to lie down as a dead guanaco so that two foxes bringing maize beer and a panpipe would drop them to feast; with the foxes' drum and jar Huatyacuri's wife made the very earth dance, and their jar never ran dry while the rival's friends fell drunk. Pariacaca clothed his son in snow to win the contest of finery, sent him a red puma skin with a rainbow around its head for the dance, and brought birds, snakes, and lizards by night to finish his house. Finally Huatyacuri rushed at his rival with a shout, and the man fled in terror and turned into a deer. His wife, who had urged him on, was turned to stone with her head on the ground and her feet in the air.

The storm

Then the five eggs on Condorcoto hatched as five falcons that became men, the brothers of Pariacaca, and they raised a storm and flood that swept the false god, his house, and his family into the sea.